Daily Archives: 04/04/2012

Pic of the day: Water-lily pond (aka The Japanese bridge) by Claude Monet

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The frustrated follow a leader less because of their faith that he is leading them to a promised land than because of their immediate feeling that he is leading them away from their unwanted selves. Surrender to a leader is not a means to an end but a fulfillment. Whither they are led is of secondary importance.

Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

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I don’t believe in fairy tales, any more than any other adult does. So when I hear someone try to pass one off on me like it’s something other than a fairy tale, I find it hard to take them seriously. Mitt Romney is out there telling fairy tales and expecting me to believe them. Says the President is intent on hiding his positions. Says there are many places where he says he has found “distortions and inaccuracies” but could not actually name any.

It is an interesting strategy, insofar as it is a humorous one. How can someone, anyone with any working brain cells look at what the President has done and be able to say that.

His positions are about as plain as day. Create jobs. Cut middle class taxes. Save money. Government investment in manufacturing to help increase the nations manufacturing base. Increase funding to small business.

If you can look at what the President has done and say he is intent on hiding his positions, you need to have some serious blinders on to say it and be serious. And if there are distortions and inaccuracies, state them. If you can sit there and say that without stating what the inaccuracies are, you should at the very least expect to not be taken very serious.

Americans don’t like bullshit, and Mitt gave us a boatload of it with those statements that he made today.

Cut the shit, Mitt.

Mind you it does not mean that the President is great, or perfect or whatever, but to paint him in a disingenuous light makes the person doing that painting look like a blithering damned idiot. He hasn’t done the best job, but it’s been pretty damned good given what he had to work with.

He’s made mistakes. He missed the boat on EFCA, he should have pushed harder for that, seeing that go under was a big disappointment. Last year’s NDAA, with it’s potential for indefinite detention of American citizens is a major mistake, and erosion of our civil liberties that should not have happened. It follows mistakes made by Dubya in a similar vein, and might have some abstract reasoning behind it, and less abstract reasons for it’s existence, but that does not mean it is right.

He tries, and he is better than what McCain could have brought us as a nation. We’d be in a full blown depression right now with a McCain Presidency. Conservatives don’t have economically feasible plans, never have, never will. Reagan was a bad President, economically speaking. So were both Bushes. You can talk all you like about the way President Obama spends, the spending was necessary.

Without it, we’d be in one helluva deeper hole than we are in. And that ain’t no fairy tale, it’s as real as rent.